Use Any Font in the Mac OS X Lion Terminal

The Terminal in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion enforces a new monospacing character width standard, which in laymen terms means you no longer have to use monospace fonts in the Terminal. You can now use any font you want, even Comic Sans like the screenshot shows up top (hooray?).

As long as you are actively using the theme you are adjusting, the changes take effect immediately in a live fashion. Perhaps more helpful than changing the font is the ability to adjust font and line spacing. While you’re in a Terminal themes settings, you can change the background picture of Terminal windows too, which is a nice effect.

I’m a big fan of Menlo Regular 11 and 12, but the world of ugly fonts is now open to you, including Dingbats and Emoji characters if you really want to get stupid. While only marginally useful, this does allow for an additional degree of user experience customization, which is always a plus in our book.